Friends of the Boar

Friends of the Boar want to see wild boar back in the UK. We want to see wild boar managed properly without cruelty. We wish to share our views of how to live safely and peacefully alongside the wild boar. Presently, we don't believe wild boar are being treated fairly nor is science used to assess and manage the population. We believe the public are misled about the true character and socio-economic benefits that they bring to Britain.

Wednesday, 28 September 2016

Our supporters have been out and about in the Forest of Dean this month hoping to catch a glimpse of the boar. Reports are that it is still very difficult to see any due to the tall bracken.

Having said this, we have had a few incidents reported already about boar getting too close for comfort.

One such nature lover contacted us about a standoff between himself, his dog and five boar near Brierley. Concerned for others in such a situation, he (Scott Worgan) contacted the local press who wrote of his experience here. The report was exagerrated of course, to make a better story, and sadly Scott was criticised in the next edition by boar lovers, including (alarmingly) someone claiming to be from Friends of the Boar!

We would like to make it clear that Friends of the Boar did not respond to the press report at all, and it concerns us that some people may be using our name in vain.

This cat-fighting in the pages of the local letters section of the press does nobody any good. It only entrenches people's belief towards the boar, good or bad. Yet what we are discovering is an increasing tolerance for the boar even in situations like Scott's, including residents who have contacted us about boar outside their homes.

We now believe that the hatred coming out of both camps (boar lovers versus boar haters) is actually being initiated and catalysed according to how we perceive each other (in the press usually) as human beings.

It is becoming clearer that boar haters are actually hating the people who support the boar more than they hate the boar themselves. And visa versa.

This is a classic divide and rule strategy employed by the authorities who are happy to read about the "war of words" at the same time as getting on with their agendas without any democratic accountability.

A bigger picture begins to emerge, one where our countryside, our forest, our towns, and indeed our own individual health is at stake.

More and more studies are coming to the conclusion that we NEED nature, and that nature needs to be working properly. Human beings have evolved in sync with nature and it's cycles of boom and bust via drought and flood, warming and cooling, freezing and melting.

But as we are more and more aware, things are changing rapidly towards a disequilibrium. Whether this is because of human activity (as per the climate change idea) or via natural variability it does not matter.

Einstein famously stated that a problem cannot be solved with the same "mind" that created it. We, therefore, cannot solve any crisis, be it climate or animal in nature if it is us that created it in the first place.

But rather than just sit back and watch the "war on words" unfold, now believing that our destiny is pre-ordained, we must change the "mind" of ourselves and those around us.

Not only that, but we must also understand that we have an inner ecosystem at work within every individual. It is becoming more obvious that this inner world is becoming just as out of equilibrium as the outer world. A doctor would term this as a "disbiosis".

Intensive farming, antibiotics, vaccinations, growth hormones, fertilisers (rich in nitrogen and phosporous), soil degredation, food additives, sweeteners, bulking agents, and the quest to make a quick buck has led us inexorably to ill-health through the food we eat.

This terrible affliction starts in the gut when our microbes are killed off or starved of their nutritious power source. We are dependent on the balance of these microbes in our gut for we are 90% microbe (only 1 in 10 of the cells in our body are human).

To restore our physical health requires nature to do what it does best, and what we have evolved with. We need a restorative ecology that provides us with nutritious food that feeds our inner ecosystem. Once this suceeds, we will learn very easily that the microbial world of ours has a direct influence on our wellbeing (sense of security) and importantly on the way we think (the mind).

Conservation is a tool that requires a fresh mind. This fresh and healthy mind can cure what we humans have harmed, both in respect of our food production, our climate and our relationship to the wild.

A forest is a very special place unlike most other external ecosystems. It has defined boundaries we can perceive. It contains trees that give us clean air and convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. The trees need the microbes in the soil to do their work, and the microbes need larger animals to manage them in turn.

One such architect of a healthy forest is the wild boar.

A wild boar is thus a symbol of a healthy you!

Repsect and cherish our healing forest.

Forgive those who do not think like you.Reap the reward of less anger and feelings of insecurity, and reap the benefit of love and acceptance.

We hope that one day we will change the mind that created all the problems, for only then will we move on to better things.

Monday, 12 September 2016

An ITV 1 documentary will be aired tomorrow (Tuesday 13th September) at 8pm.

It's title is Nightmare Neighbours. It is part of a series and it will attempt to portray the wild boar as just that - a nightmare neighbour for residents here in the Forest of Dean.

Anyone who read the last post and maybe thought we were exagerating about the mainstream media, may like to read The Daily Mail just 2 days ago (9th September 2016). The article is clearly presstituting itself to the ITV Corporation by advertising the ITV programme tomorrow in such a sensationalist and downright inaccurate way.

This, apparently, is what the mainstream thinks we want to see and hear and what sells viewing figures! Treating the British public like brainless idiots will surely backfire?

Read the fully biased and derogatory article towards people of the Forest of Dean here

Friends of the Boar were interviewed for the programme, and we can only hope that they haven't distorted our voice.

We will be looking carefully to see if they showed how people can help to repair the turves of grass dug by boar. We hope they will show the wildflowers created by diggings. We certainly hope our message about the current over-cull is causing more problems than it solves will also be given some airtime. And we would also expect our strategy for controlling numbers more effectively, and with a social and ecological conscience, will also be aired.

Monday, 5 September 2016

The last week of August witnessed the seasonal appearance of the boar after the summer recess. Hooray!

Boar fans may wish to visit the Forest of Dean now with a hope a seeing one of our most amazing mammals.

Every year, almost to the day, boar reappear from the heart of the forest. After a safe period of piglet rearing, the shortage of food starts to bite and the roadside verges start to call.

This is also a time when the inexperienced, first-time mums, give birth to their first litter of 4-6 piglets. The roadside verges represent a life-saving resource to these families, stocked full of insect grubs not to mention human waste after a summer full of litter throwing tourists.

Grubs as well as flowers grow well in the warmth of these verges, comparatively unshaded from the sun unlike the deeper parts of the forest where a dense tree canopy has all but killed of the grass by blocking out the light.

This period of fresh diggings around the forest always sparks a media frenzy for silly stories, and this year is no different.

The media are gifted press releases from the Forestry Commission's new public relations department of spin and disinformation. But not before meetings are convened in secret with various stakeholders in the Forest. It has become clear that the Forest of Dean is becoming corporatist by the backdoor, rather than by direct sell-off by the quango's (the FC) master in government (DEFRA).

On the 24th August, one such meeting took place between the Forestry Commission, commercial pig-breeders, boar hunters (The Deer Initiative) and the NFU (National farmers Union). Also present was the UKplc's local representative Mark Harper MP.

A day later, as predicted by Friends of the Boar, the results of the meeting would hit the centralised mainstream news media, leading to the usual inaccurate and utterly sensationalised descriptions of what is actually happening in the Forest of Dean.

The BBC had pig farmers on it's radio broadcasts, whining about breeding purity of rare breeds coming under attack. One woman mentioned being unable to allow her pigs roam wild on a grass bank because of threats from wild boar mating with her prized meat on trotters.

Thankfully on this show, Scott Passmore, formerly of Friends of the Boar but these days running his own venture "A Wild Life With Animals", challenged this pig-breeder to get a more secure fence around her pigs, just like her predecessors would have had when the Forest of Dean allowed pigs to roam free for months during pannage. Pig breeders didn't seem concerned with interbreeding of pigs of all shapes and races back then!

The only discussion that is noted in the main press release (see link) is how to kill more and more boar in the light of new and scientifically ridiculous guesswork on boar numbers. Numbers that are now put at over 1,500 boar, or in excess of 21 wild boar for every square kilometre of forest habitat!!

Utterly impossible!

This is dumbed down for the volunteer journalism recruits, or novice but enthusiastic corporate-sponsored "Presstitutes". A syndicated and automated news story feed with a tag-line that the boar population has increased by 50% on last year lands on their desk and they feel they need to generate click-throughs in order to be noticed by their editor.

The National Pig Association (NPA) of course believes everything that it's told by the inventors of the boar census at Bank House in Coleford, Gloucestershire. Similarly, the UKplc's rep also unquestionably defers to that authority, and what is created is a "consensus" without facts. Everyone is now awakening to the consensus trick of the mainstream media, but it doesn't stop themselves making each other look foolish and stupid.

Have a read of the ludicrous take from The Sun newspaper (see link), who also attempts to make us fearful of "educated" hogs, "smashing" through fences, leaving councillors "baffled".

None of this is actually happening!

Here is the NPA's own knee jerk report (see link) to the inaccurate news on boar numbers. The NPA now "demands" numbers be drastically reduced before the profits of UKplc take a turn for the worse.

The pig industry is of course controlled by DEFRA (the same daddy to the FC) through licenses and regulations, so it comes as no surprise the NPA has no voice of its own as clearly demonstrated in their report. The NPA quotes "new modelling" of numbers without question! The conclusion of this is the targeting of over 700 wild boar for this next hunting season (of course a number that doesn't exist naturally without the intervention of bad management).

Is it a coincidence that this news also comes the same week that guns are being fired at our badgers too?

This place is THE FOREST of DEATH. Bad science, consensus and a whore of a corporate mainstream press are forcing this upon us and our wildlife. It has no basis in fact and hides the true reasons behind diseases in animals - it is bad domestic husbandry.

The NPA claim they're worried about boar giving pigs diseases, when it is exactly the opposite that is true - domestic pigs are the historical and present-day source of all swine disease. We worry that diseased pigs on farms meet with the boar. We urge the farmers to fence in their diseased animals!

The pig industry admits that it is domestic pigs that pose the greatest biosecurity threat to other pigs and give advice on this here.

The same argument is true for Tb in cattle. Poor cattle husbandry has been shown to be the vector for Tb in badgers. But DEFRA and the "CON-sensus" CON-struct tries to avert gaze away from the truths about British farming and its disastrous effects on wildlife.

About Us & Contact

A no-frills group of wildlife enthusiasts, scientists, photographers and local residents wishing to see wild boar and all other wildlife thrive in the Forest of Dean and elsewhere in the UK.
Founded by David J Slater and Joyce Moss in the summer of 2011 as an independent conservation group with no prior affiliations.
Hoping to promote understanding of wild boar and as a pressure group to produce a realistic and science-based management plan of wild boar in the UK.
E-mail us via "my complete profile" below. Media enquirers only - please telephone 07999950697.

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We predict there will be many good and possibly rare photos of UK wild boar posted here over the coming years. We are supported by many talented wildlife photographers.

Please remember all photographs on this site are protected by UK Copyright Law and cannot be used without permission. Anyone wishing to use photos from this site please seek permission from the named photographer or via this blog. Thanks.

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